I suffered my first running related injury this weekend--that is, if you don’t count the time in high school when our cross country team went on a road trip and we ate at a Burger King and the pecan pie made me sick.

I didn’t break anything but I wrenched my foot pretty badly.  A long, narrow bruise begins near my toes and swoops all the way back to the corner of my heel, like a blueberry-colored racing stripe.

I’ve been dreading this.  It’s the start of the diminishing returns for exercise, when you’re old enough that trying to stay fit does more harm than good.  For example:

You take a bite of a “Healthy Choice” microwave casserole and accidentally stab yourself in the eye with the fork.

You do ab crunches while watching TV and the TV falls over and crushes your head.

You sign up for an Aerobics class, but all the people in the class are assassin ninjas in disguise and they swarm around you and kill you while Britney’s “Toxic” pounds in your ears.

Exercise is for chumps, as that wise philosopher Denis Leary tell us: “Have you seen these people who are using the stairmaster? What’s next, the chairmaster? I sit down, I get up, I sit down, I get up, I sit down, I get up! The doormaster: I open the door, I close the door, I open the door, I close the door! Folks, you wanna go up and down steps, move into a 5th floor walkup on the lower east side.”

The worst part is arriving at work on Monday and seeing all the vacant, beautiful handicapped parking spaces right near the entrance to the building.  Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to walk those few extra steps? But no.  You have no right.  You have no blue card.  You may be tempted to tape digital pictures of your bruised foot to your windshield with a note attached that says “JUST RETURNED FROM ABU GHRAIB, I HAVE THREE STARVING CHILDREN,” but the fact remains: there are others who are just a little more “differently abled” than you.  So you park in the lot and get out of the car and hunch along with a noticeable limp, until someone says: “Oh, my cousin has the exact same condition.  He eventually went to work in a church clocktower.”